Open letter says categoric misplacement and fundamentally flawed to assert Albania is safe
In an open letter published yesterday, the Migrant and Refugee Children's Legal Unit (MICLU) together with 40 other organisations and dozens of individuals called for Albania to be removed from a list of 'safe countries' in the Government's Illegal Migration Bill.
Image credit: WikipediaMICLU is a specialist legal and policy hub hosted by Islington Law Centre with an expertise in Albanian asylum cases through its Breaking the Chains partnership with the Shpresa Programme.
The Illegal Migration Bill's categorisation of Albania as safe would mean that Albanians could be swiftly returned to their country origin, regardless of their individual asylum or human rights claims.
The open letter says that it is fundamentally flawed to assert that Albania is safe, and including Albania in a list of 'safe countries' is a categoric misplacement. MICLU and the other signatories say Albania does not meet the requisite standards to be classified as safe.
"The country grapples with severe issues like corruption, human trafficking, gang-related violence, and discrimination against various communities including LGBTQI, Roma, and Egyptian communities. The Albanian government's persistent failure to effectively address these issues is distressing. … Those of us providing professional support services for Albanian asylum seekers and victims of trafficking directly witness the fear and suffering of the Albanian asylum-seeking community. These individuals, who are extremely vulnerable, often remain unrecognised as such by society at large. This is only exacerbated by prevailing narratives of criminality and asylum system abuse that are fuelling a ratcheting racism," the letter states.
The letter calls for the support of an amendment proposed by Baroness Lister and Lord Cashman in the House of Lords which would remove Albania from the Bill's list of safe countries.
Baroness Lister said in a House of Lords debate on the Bill on Monday: "Once again, the evidence does not support the simplistic premises on which the Bill is built. There are many good reasons why it might not be safe to return an Albanian national to their home country. … Binding country guidance case law, according to ILPA, confirms that there can be risk of persecution in Albania. Moreover, the Home Office's own country and policy information notes, which contain factual, research-based information, explain why, in effect, Albania is all too often not safe, even if the Home Office notes reach a different conclusion. The notes identify trafficking, blood feuds, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression, and domestic violence against women as key factors."
Lord Hacking said during the debate: "As my noble friend Lady Lister said, there is a lot of evidence of significant and outstanding issues in Albania relating to corruption, trafficking, blood feuds, discrimination and violence against the LGBT community, and stigma and discrimination against ethnic Roma and Egyptian communities and so forth. There are real grounds to be concerned whether, on any definition, Albania is properly placed as a safe country. That view is supported in our own Home Office's work in 2022 when the UK granted protection status to 700 Albanian nationals, including 60 unaccompanied children."
As Baroness Lister noted in her speech, Monday also saw the publication of a report by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee which took an opposing view and concluded that Albania is a safe country and there is no clear basis for the UK to routinely accept thousands of asylum applications from Albanian citizens.
The report can be read online here.
"Albania is a safe European country. It is not at war, and it is a signatory to European conventions relating to, among other things, human trafficking, and it is a candidate country to join the European Union. … [W]e have seen little evidence that its citizens should need to seek political asylum in the UK or elsewhere as a result of the actions of its Government," the report states.
The Committee added that while claims for political asylum should not normally be entertained, there are unquestionably cases of Albanian citizens being trafficked to the UK.
The report states: "It is, of course, not the case that no asylum claim made by a person from Albania can succeed: an individual may be a refugee because he or she may be fleeing repression in fear of harm or their life from non-governmental actors such as organised criminals or traffickers. In the case of Albania, such reasons and the existence of long-standing blood feuds are sometimes advanced as causes for leaving. None the less, it seems clear that the grounds for successful claims of political asylum from Albania are open to question, and the Home Office has, since December, altered its guidance to asylum decision-makers to stress Albania's safety, with the intention of reducing the rate of successful claims."
The Home Affairs Committee said it chose to focus on Albania due to the unexpected spike in small boat crossings and asylum claims by Albanian nationals in 2022. However, the Committee stresses that Albanians should not be singled out and scapegoated in relation to the UK's ongoing asylum backlog.
MICLU says that the Albanian asylum-seeking community faces additional prejudice and disbelief beyond the general climate of disbelief in the asylum system.
On its website, MICLU notes: "Albania has a long history of clan violence, blood feuds and revenge killings, as well as political instability. Domestic violence, so-called 'honour-based' violence, gender-based violence and child-specific persecution are also significant issues. Albania is also a source country for one of the largest groups of trafficked women and children to reach the UK's shores, and is consistently in the top 5 or 6 child asylum applicant producing countries in relation to child asylum seekers in the UK. Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children from Albania, who have been trafficked or who are fleeing threats or violence, arrive in the UK each year, destitute, exhausted and traumatised."